


i know your heart like the back of my hand

by blushandbooks



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV 2020)
Genre: ...my finger slipped?, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Willie & Flynn & Reggie are mentioned but have zero lines whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 01:07:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30013761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blushandbooks/pseuds/blushandbooks
Summary: Julie Molina could just about pinpoint the exact moment that she became consciously aware that she was in love with her best friend.--Three years later, Julie is still in love with Luke, and still hasn’t said a damn thing about it.--or, the best friends/ring shopping au that more than two people expressed like towards
Relationships: Alex Mercer/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms), Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Comments: 30
Kudos: 251





	i know your heart like the back of my hand

**Author's Note:**

> title from the song "when you're ready" by shawn mendes!
> 
> look, this was a random idea brewed with @Ephermeral_Joy and @Bluefire510 and i never expected to write it but then i told jatp tumblr about it and people liked it?? so i wrote it.   
> her line of reasoning is shaky af, i honestly don't know how any of this happened, bear with me but please enjoy lol!!!
> 
> TEEN RATING: in this fic they are adults so they drink lol, and also some more sexually mature themes. k. thats it :)

Julie Molina could just about pinpoint the exact moment that she became consciously aware that she was in love with her best friend. 

The memory replayed in her head just about every time he grinned at her : Foggy vision from just waking up, her band and her best friends gathered in the living room of her apartment with a cake lit up in candlelight and a much-too-loud “Happy Birthday!” bursting from the tops of their tongues. 

She turned 22 that day. Their friend group had been bound in steel for nearly four years by then, and their band for barely even one.

Meeting a cocky, sleeveless guitarist in the second semester of her first year of school was never in the cards. Let alone one with a flirtatious smile with the power to knock any and all air from her lungs; and one whose friend group would wrap her up and not let her go.

But the first time they ever talked about music together, anyone could clearly see that their musical future lied within each other. 

At first, when Flynn was Julie’s dorm-mate and a total stranger, the eager producer was taken aback by the pair. Julie had clicked with Luke so suddenly that she never understood the confusion until her dad came to visit her on campus for a day. 

_ “This _ is Luke?”

It wasn’t asked in a rude or offensive way -- Ray Molina didn’t have a judgemental bone in his body. But as he looked at the bouncy, golden retriever of a human being who smiled at Julie like she was a sunny day at the beach and could spin his guitar around his back, Ray couldn’t help but wonder how Julie and this new boy in her life were able to tolerate each other.

The charming, kind, and patient siren-like singer and the goofy, confident, jittery guitarist? 

It turned out to be a match made in musical heaven. 

It only took watching them for barely five minutes to see how it worked. Between Luke and Julie, conversation flowed, communication was clear, and chemistry was palpable. They would cut each other off mid-sentence because they just knew what the other was going to say, and Julie’s father often remarked that it felt as though the two of them each had one half of one whole brain. 

Freshman year bled into sophomore year as Flynn and Julie were roped into the orbit of Luke and his friends, Alex, Reggie, and Bobby. 

Sophomore year, full of late nights and plenty of pizza, gave Julie and Luke the first night of writing they ever did together. 

Julie should have known then that she loved him, but they’d only known each other for a year. Everything that they had ever done was friendly, with their group of friends, and songwriting was just another thing that brought them closer.

The shine in his eyes was just from the soft lamplight. Definitely not from watching her sit at the piano and sing with the most angelic voice he would never tire of hearing. 

So, yeah. She’s close to him, but there isn’t a crush involved. No romance at all, actually. Because the next year, her and Luke and Alex and Reggie form their band. 

And Julie saw it as a sign that her and Luke are meant to make music together. But they shouldn’t be anything else, because, c’mon, everyone knows that dating within the band is dangerous. 

There are too many examples that proved that it would end in tears and flames.

So, any suspicions about romantic feelings are quickly quelled. They formed a band, they worked their asses off for this band, and they kept it up. They booked gigs; one prominent one being the week after her 22nd birthday. 

The day that Julie registered she’s in love with Luke, after years of him making her food at 1 AM after a long writing session and coming to family holidays as a buffer from her cousins. 

Along with the smaller trinkets that he gets her, his primary gag of the day is gallantly presenting her with a ring pop as they curl up on her old couch.

“I know it’s not a diamond. But, soon, I’ll be able to buy you something way shiner and cooler for your birthday, but…” As she laughs at his dramatics, he tugs on her left hand and slides the ring onto her ring finger. “But this will have to do for now. Pretend it’s a placeholder, okay? Way cooler stuff to come.”

_ Pretend it’s a placeholder.  _

There are words that come before it and words that come after, but her ears let that single line echo. 

The red candy on her hand reflects the light from the sun beginning to stream through the window, and when she pretends it’s a placeholder, she winds up imagining that it’s a real white gold ring he’s given her and then someone is saying that they are pronounced husband and wife and the fantasy goes way too far. 

The depths of her mind spilled out for her to see. 

“Sorry it’s kinda dumb,” Luke interrupts her internal breakdown with an insecure tone and the sight of him roughly rubbing the back of his neck. “You liked the other stuff, right? I just thought this might be funny- But if you don’t like it-”

“No, Luke, it- It’s great. I love it, actually.” 

“You don’t have to lie.”

“I’m not.” 

She’s just experiencing an epiphany that is way too deep to get into when they are best friends, bandmates, and all of their friends are having a cake fight less than ten feet away from them. So, in the best deflection that she can muster after being struck with the tsunami of fluid, painful want for Luke to give her a ring with a promise for forever, she moves on.

“But, no diamonds.”

Still looking uneasy and self-conscious, Luke tries to quirk his most charming smile with a confused head tilt. “What?”   
  


“You said it’s not a diamond, but I don’t really want diamonds, no matter how many albums we sell. I like amber.”

If she holds the candy ring up to the light at a specific angle and squints, it kind of (not really) takes on an amber-ish hue. 

“Amber?”

“My mom’s birthstone,” Julie explains. “More personal than a diamond, right?”

Telling him this feels nonsensical. It’s not like he’ll ever need this information, right? The thought alone is enough to bring down her birthday, but after they go out for drinks that night to celebrate and he gives her the warmest hug with a kiss on the cheek as he stumbles with her to her door, she feels the ache dull.

The next morning it returns in full force. 

\--

Three years later, Julie is still in love with Luke, and still hasn’t said a damn thing about it. 

Her passionate and guilty thoughts were spewed across pages and pages of secret papers tucked into a box -- she called it her Dream Box 2.0, similar to the one she had in high school -- and sat there to either evaporate from existence or manifest themselves into the universe. Her father tells her and her and Luke share the halves of a brain, but she thinks that they share halves of a soul, and tucks that thought into the dreambox with all the rest of them.

Some of the papers were just large, sloppy, all-caps I LOVE HIM scribbled over and over until the paper tore under her pen. Those nights were the worst; but the next morning she was up and smiling.

Everything is fine. 

It’s fine when they score a manager and record deal following that gig after her birthday, and it’s fine when Luke slips a love song on the EP like she wouldn’t notice. Through her heartbreak that she never expected to hurt so much, she doesn’t bother to ask who the lucky muse was.

It’s fine when the EP sells well -- and the full album does even better. It’s fine when the first single off of the album debuts #2 on the Billboard charts and the next single debuts #1, and their tour is small but raved about. 

It’s fine when, on that tour, Alex meets someone. And is ready to get engaged a year later.

Julie demands that she come along to help select a proper ring for Willie, seeing as how they had gotten incredibly close when him and Alex started dating. Luke invites himself along because he is Alex’s best friend, of course, and refuses to miss his best friend picking out engagement rings. 

Reggie and Flynn are in charge of distracting Willie for the day, being the chaotic duo they are, and that’s how Julie finds herself stepping into a jeweler with the love of her life by her side to find engagement rings for their best friends.

Thinking through it tires her out. It’s quite the brainful, isn’t it?

_ It’s fine.  _

So why is it awkward? 

It really, really shouldn’t be awkward. Julie could blame it on the woman, Jenny, anyways -- the employee takes one look at the three of them, focuses on Luke and Julie, and asks them when they’re tying the knot. 

Julie has a headache and it is only a little past noon. 

Luke almost takes the mistake worse than she does. He chokes on air, avoids Julie’s eyes, and trips over his attempted correction to Jenny in a way that cements Julie’s hurt even more. He’s clearly desperate to insist that they aren’t together.

(Which, they aren’t. Doesn’t make it any less painful, though.)

Jenny profusely apologizes for her mistake with a sneaky comment about how she was drawn to Luke and Julie when he held the door open for her at the entrance, and shifts her attention fully to Alex to question him on what he wants. 

Suffocating in the tense air, Luke and Julie are animatedly following Alex to check out some simpler ring styles when the drummer voices that he’s going to look at some options himself, and then narrow them down for the two of them to look at. 

“You two, I love you to death, but you will definitely distract me from actually picking out rings.”

So the songwriters, dejected, begin to drift off through the aisles and sparkling display cases as Alex and Jenny start the search. 

The silence is deafening, and both of them are desperate for something to catch their eye so that conversation can flow and the tension can sink to the bottom of the ocean between them. It takes a while, but eventually-

“Oh, Jules, c’mere! It’s that stone you like so much.”

He remembers?

His voice is so neutral now, so unbothered, that Julie concludes that Luke has decided to forget about the weirdness. It’s cool. She can, too, but…

_ Does he actually remember? _

“Amber?” Luke, feigning hopefulness, nods her over. She gasps as soon as she gets a good look at it. “Oh my God, it is. Isn’t it pretty?”

Her eyes are wide looking down into the case, like she’s a kid in a candy store. The band is off medium width and there are antique-like engravings of intricate trees and flowers on each side of the stone. 

Maybe her happiness is what prompts Luke to impulsively do what he does next.

“Excuse me?” He catches the attention of the other store employee. “Can we see this one?”

Julie’s head whips to the right to face him. “Luke-”

“It’s fine, Boss. Live a little! You like it, don’t you?”

She likes it, it’s beautiful, and she knows her mom would love it too. But she doesn’t want to live a little, in fact, dying sounds pretty sick right now. A wave of prayers are sent to whoever will listen for the ground to open up and swallow her.

“Yeah, but-”

Keys jingle and click as they open the case, and the employee, with slender hands, is offering the ring out to them. Luke jumps to take it.

“When’s the big day for you two?”

The woman says it so calmly, so carelessly; and it’s just like that that Luke and Julie remember where they are. In a jeweler, looking at rows of engagement rings together, as if…

“Oh, no!” Julie giggles with too much venom, her left hand still out as she waits for Luke to put the ring on. It’s her turn to deny the suspicions. “We’re not- He’s my best friend. We’re helping our other friend go ring shopping.”

“Yeah,” Luke adds on, “best friends. We’re not together. She just wanted to see the ring.”

The woman looks less than convinced, but nods and smiles anyways before walking away to help another customer. “That was funny,” Julie mumbles, turning back to Luke; who still has the ring in his hand. 

She suddenly wants to jerk her hand away and not suffer through his, but how bad would that look?

Without comment, his right hand softly slips under her palm and holds it in place so that he can slide the ring onto her left ring finger. The amber glows perfectly against the rosy brown of her skin, and a jolt shoots down his back once the ring is in place.

The flashes are back, the same ones from her birthday three years ago -- she wants this, she wants it to be reality, she wants him to mean it. 

But he won’t.

As for Luke, he can’t help it – he glances up at Julie. She’s already looking at him with wide eyes.

“Yeah,” he whispers, looking back down at the ring. Her hand is still in his. “It was funny.”

Nobody is laughing. But Alex calls them back for help before they can linger on it.

\--

“You… You bought the ring.”

He doesn’t meet her eyes. 

Since ring shopping, there was a shift. Julie tried not to let it get to her, but every songwriting session that they had ended up turning romantic and Luke would scrap it. She was nearing her breaking point, especially since they needed another three songs by the end of the month, but she was convincing herself that they could get through it.

That she was strong enough to do it.

“Well, it’s your birthday, and you loved the ring, so I bought it for you. You don’t have to make it weird.”

She turns the ring in her hands. It’s still shiny and stunning and alluring as it was in the glass case in the jeweler – still meant to be for another use. A use that she would love him to give it to her for, a use that is so far beyond her wildest dreams that revolve around Luke Patterson.

If he asked, she would say yes right now. 

(But he’s not asking.)

“Luke… You bought me an engagement ring.”

Suddenly, he rises from his chair with frustration. His hand comes up and rubs the back of his neck furiously, and again, he doesn’t look directly at her. 

“What are labels, anyway? You wanted it. I bought it. Happy birthday.”

Birthday. Birthday, birthday, birthday.

_ Happy birthday.  _ ~~_ Will you marry me? _ ~~

Tears prickle in her eyes from the sentimentality and meaning behind her buying it for him, and the tugging towards the fact that she wants him but he doesn’t want her. Not like this. 

Unlike in the jeweler, she puts the ring on herself; and is struck with the wish that it was a ring pop that had much less meaning than this. Something that he was comfortable putting on for her, because it was a stupid piece of candy that would be licked away and thrown in the garbage.

Not a ring that would stay solid on her finger, filling the placeholder that he gave her now four years ago.

“Thank you,” she mumbles, “I love it.”

Bile lingers in her throat even after Luke leaves, and she tries to chase it down with wine; the amber ring glowing on the kitchen counter in front of her. 

She leaves it there when she goes to bed.

\--

The next Friday after her birthday is when the band goes out to celebrate, because Alex and Willie are finally home from their honeymoon. 

And God, is she looking forward to having a reason to be drunk and happy. 

It surprises her, briefly, when Luke wanders through the doors of the club. Obviously, he was invited; but Julie was unsure of whether or not he would actually show up. No one else knew about the gory details of her emotional conflicts with Luke, so her friends erupt in cheers at the sight of him. 

She greets him with a friendly side hug, and they order drinks with overlapping voices. 

They manage to avoid each other for a while, and it kills Julie, because he probably knows. He must know she’s heartbroken, and has loved him for much too long,  and that he definitely does not feel the same way. How is he supposed to act around her now that she’s changed the dynamics?

Before she knows it, the self-blaming spiral sends her through glass after glass. 

Laughter gets louder and every song is easy to dance to, and Luke doesn’t love her but it doesn’t matter. 

“No ring tonight?”

His voice, slurred, hums like a melody next to her ear. She hasn’t heard him so close in a long time. She almost rolls her head back and shuts her eyes, replaying the question in her head, recalling how close he’s standing. 

But then the actual inquiry registers, and her haze is engulfed in anger. “Didn’t go with the dress,” she says into her glass. He scoffs. 

“Rings are meant to be worn, y’know.”

“It didn’t go with the dress.”

Her voice is nearly robotic, but it’s all she has to cling to.

Silently, he raises his third -- fourth -- fifth? -- rum and Coke to his lips. There’s an eye roll that Julie doesn’t see for herself, but she knows is there. “Thought it would be nice seeing you wearing your birthday gift, is all. Got it for you for a reason.”

So many things she could say, if only her thoughts were coherent. 

_ It wasn’t a birthday gift. It was more than that, Luke.  _

_ And what reason was that? Because, newsflash, people buy each other nice rings like that for engagements.  _

“Well, it’s at home. Want to go get it?”

Of course, of all of her ideas and comebacks that could have come out instead, she chooses the absolute worst one. The most tempting one, yes, because it gets the two of them in the backseat of an Uber; but they are not in their right mind.

He’s definitely not in his right mind when he tells her he’s been thinking about her, and buying her a real ring, since the Ring Pop. She’s not in her right mind when she leans into every word he says, knowing full well that he’s drunk and that it’s most likely all just drunken babble.

He’s not in his right mind when he fists a hand in her hair and kisses her.

She’s not in her right mind when she crawls into his lap to kiss him back. 

Because of her trainwreck of a comeback, he’s pressing himself against her back with his tongue lapping at her neck and shoulder while her hands fumble with the keys to her apartment. Because of her comeback, she knows how he sounds when he rasps in her ear that he’s had dreams about her skin.

Because of her comeback, she gets to watch him put the ring back on her finger by himself and punctuate it with a firm kiss to her knuckle. 

She should regret everything that happened that resulted in the two of them being wrapped in her sheets, but she doesn’t. She can be ashamed in the morning. 

\--

Somehow, the instant that consciousness registers, the shame hits before the hangover does.

A body stirs next to her, and the pressure in the room is all she needs to feel to know that Luke is awake. He’s awake, next to her, and she had an amazing night but this fucking ring is still on her finger and she has no idea how to talk to him anymore.

Not without telling him she loves him. 

While the possibilities of how this morning-after conversation could go create a twister in her head, the arm wrapping around her middle almost slips by unnoticed.  She’s so all-consumed by worry that she feels it but doesn’t feel it -- until the kiss on her shoulder hits.

“Julie…”

_ What a lovely way to wake up, _ she solemnly thinks to herself. If only she could have this every day.

But, knowing she can’t, and that Luke is trying to wake her up, she slowly but surely turns around under his arm so that she is facing him. 

He looks like shit, but he’s still perfect. He’s Luke.

“Morning,” she mumbles. His hand flexes against the sheets on her back. 

“Morning.” Anxiety is still present -- bouncing between them like a tennis ball. Suddenly, he sighs. “I’m sorry.”

Playing dumb, “for what?”

“Last night. Your birthday. A lot.”

“What about last night?”

If he says he regrets it, she’s out of here. Her emotions have been through a lot, and if he says “we can never do this again,” or some of that bullshit, she will have to go M.I.A. for a minimum of three days.

“I don’t want you to feel like I took advantage of you,” he says instead. “We were both so… Well, I don’t know how you felt. I just knew I felt like I fucked everything up with you, but whenever I fuck something up, you’re normally the only thing that makes it better, so… Dangerous cycle there.”

For once, as a response to the insistent stuttering of her heart, Julie allows herself to hope. 

“I thought I fucked things up with you,” she offers. The admission, while not an “I am so fucking in love with you,” is enough of a relief to trigger a deep exhale. 

“You didn’t fuck anything up. I did. I totally, totally did -- I mean, I bought you a fucking engagement ring and couldn’t even tell you I love you, and-”

Julie doesn’t really hear anything that he says after that. Some words register as familiar, like “worried about the band” and “not feeling the same way” and if someone told her that Luke was reading her diary out loud, she might believe them. 

But really, all that she heard was I love you, because she doesn’t know if she heard correctly.

“Julie? Julie, are you okay?”

“Did you just say you loved me?”

Luke’s jaw falls slack. Julie can only imagine the hundreds of words pooling at the tip of his tongue, ready to come out, because that’s how she feels too. They’re on the brink of so much. Neither is ready to take the jump themselves. 

“I- Did-” It takes him a second to choose one of his many options. He decides on the simplest: “Yes.”

“You love me?”

The scoff is back. They’re back at the bar, and she’s sassing him over a ring, and he’s scoffing. “ _Of course_ I love you, Julie.”

Her heart is racing inside of her chest. There’s so many options, so many responses -- the most logical being “I love you too” -- but she is so overwhelmed with the news that her agony wasn’t all in vain that all she can find it in herself to do is push towards him and kiss him; wrapping around him until he is where she starts and he is where she ends. 

When she pulls away for air, she remembers. “I love you too,” she pants, basking in the glory of how Luke’s face lights up. “I love you, too.”

There are still questions, concerns and comments that they both have related to how long they’ve been doing this to themselves, how to handle the band, and what  the hell the amber ring means to them now -- but they don’t discuss it all at once. 

It’s hours in bed, lazy and calm and the most relaxing they have felt in a long time. It’s his hands tracing the skin that he has now soberly confirmed he’s dreamt about, and her face burying in his neck because she just wants to feel him. 

The ring is no longer solely a birthday gift, but it isn’t a full-fledged engagement ring, either. They have been together for less than 24 hours-

But the ring finally finds its purpose six months later, when they prompt each other with the idea of marriage, and Luke withdraws a Ring Pop from his pocket because “he knew she would want the amber ring no matter what, but he still wanted something to surprise her with.”

After Luke put the ring on for her that singular, drunken night, she never took it off again.


End file.
